Context for a new millennium

As our predecessors did 100 years ago, we stand on the verge of a new century
trying to gaze into the future with little to base ourselves on but our past experience,
highest hopes and deepest fears. Extrapolating from the past has always been a risky
enterprise, especially considering the quantum shift type of changes at the global level
that we have experienced during the past decadethe sudden end of the Cold War and
the nuclear confrontation between the superpowers, the breakup of the Soviet Union,
economic liberalization of China, explosive growth of the Internet, the East Asian
financial crisis and launching of the Euromost of which were not only unanticipated
but almost inconceivable a few years before they became realities. But it would be equally
hazardous to ignore the broader historical trends in favor of current perceptions and
immediate preoccupations. Many of these trends represent the maturation or culmination of
movements that can be traced back to early in the current century or even to the century
before.

How then can we approach this task of assessing the prospects of the next
century with some modicum of order and some hope of adding to the sum of our knowledge and
understanding rather than merely stirring the already murky pot of divergent views on the
future? This was the challenge that confronted Fellows of the World Academy of Art and
Science at the 1998 Vancouver Assembly during a series of workshops on Development and
Economics in the Global Century organized on three themes: The forces shaping global
development at the turn of the 21st Century, the emergence of global economic
organizations, and strategies for balanced development in the next century.

20th Century Accomplishments

Our speculations about the next century began by seeking a clearer
perspective on the accomplishments of the century now drawing to a close. The 20th
Century has generated such an astonishing range and depth of human accomplishments that it
seems presumptuous to even hazard assertions about the future of development. In the past
two hundred years social productivity has increased to such an extent that the global
community now sustains a population 12 times larger than in 1800. From a rural-based,
agrarian society in which less than three percent of the people lived in cities and towns,
the human community has evolved into an urban-centered, industrial society in which the
population of the worlds cities and towns now exceeds 40 percent of the total.
Throughout history urbanization has been a great instrument for development, because it
brings together at one place all the ingredients of social productivitypeople,
ideas, organization, technology, resources, capitaland magnifies the number and
speed of interactions between them. The growth of urban communities during the last
century has brought with it a host of problemsovercrowding, pollution, crime,
etc.but it has also brought political freedom, economic security, education and
modern conveniences to billions of people.

At the turn of the 20th Century, most of the world still remained
in the rural, agrarian phase of developmentwhat Alvin Toffler terms the First
Wavethat characterized human society for the previous 10,000 years. America was
mostly frontier spotted with family farms. Horse-drawn carts and hitching posts were
familiar sights in American towns. There were only 10 miles of concrete road in the entire
country. Sixty percent of the population lived in rural areas, most of which were not even
formed communities, in simple, poorly constructed single-storied homes. Large bands of
unattached men roamed the country in search of employment. The most important products of
the US economy were horse-drawn buggies, hairpins, bicycles, and horseshoes. The average
life span was 49 years, less than two-thirds of what it is today. In 1870 only one
doctoral degree was conferred in the entire country compared to 36,000 in 1990. Lanterns,
candles, gas and oil lamps were the prevalent forms of lighting. The USA had only one
power plant producing 5000 horsepower compared with more than 10,000 power plants
producing three trillion kilowatt hours today. Less than 2% of the population had
telephones. There were only 8000 automobiles in the entire country. Silk stockings were
the most popular consumer product. Women did not yet have the right to vote.

Some parts of Western Europe were more developed than North America in the
late 19th century, but the level of urbanization was about the same and rural
life everywhere had much the same complexion. In 1870 there were only eight cities in all
of Germany. In many parts of the world, only 10 to 20% of the people lived in urban
communities. Large portions of the world population, including the entire Indian
subcontinent and most of Africa, remained under foreign colonial rule. Democratic forms of
government were a rare exception and no democratic country had yet extended voting rights
to women. Large-scale famines were still common in the worlds two most populous
nations, China and India. Life expectancy in most countries was less than one-half current
levels. The ideal of secular, compulsory education had gained acceptance in the most
progressive countries of Europe: Britain and Japan both introduced national systems of
secular elementary education in the 1870s. But in other parts of the world, the vast
majority of people still could not read or write. Banks began to proliferate in Europe
only toward the end of the 19th Century. Coal, iron, steel and textiles were
the worlds major industrial exports.

The 1997 UNDP Human Development Report observed that over the past 50 years
the world has made greater progress in eradicating poverty than during the previous 500.
Around the globe, life expectancy is climbing, infant mortality is declining, epidemic
diseases are receding, famine is becoming extinct and education is becoming more
widespread. The worlds average life expectancy is more than 66 years, about twice
the average in 1900. Even among the least developed countries, it is now six years longer
than it was in the USA in 1900. More than half the worlds adult population is now
literate. Universal primary education has become a global standard. Most of these gains
have been achieved since 1950. Since mid-century, average per capita income has tripled
and average real per capita consumption in developing countries has doubled, despite a
more than doubling of world population.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that todays least developed
countries could match and perhaps even exceed the accomplishments of the most advanced
industrial nations within a much shorter time than it took for the original achievements.
Beginning in 1780, it took the United Kingdom 58 years to double output per capita. The
United States did it in 47 years, beginning in 1839. Japan accomplished the feat in only
24 years, beginning in the 1880s. But after the Second World War, Indonesia did it in 17
years, South Korea in 11 and China in 10. From 1960 to 1990 real per capita standards of
living based on purchasing power parity multiplied twelve-fold in South Korea, seven-fold
in Japan, more than six-fold in Egypt and Portugal, and well above five-fold in Indonesia
and Thailand. Some of these gains have been wiped out by the recent international
financial crisis, but if we can draw appropriate lessons from that experience, comparable
accomplishments should be possible for every country.

These global achievements mask considerable differences in the levels of
development within and between countries. More than one and a quarter billion people still
live in absolute poverty. Disparities between haves and have nots are widening. They also
mask significant problems, such as environmental pollution, urban congestion and crime,
that have been either a result or concomitant aspects of rapid global development.
Nevertheless, viewed globally in a historical perspective, the accomplishments of the last
100 years are without precedent.

Catalysts
of Development

The purpose of our inquiry was not to assess the actual achievements of the
20th Century, but rather to ponder the potential achievements of the 21st.
Nevertheless, the discussion began by looking backwards to identify the forces responsible
for the achievements of the last century and to determine whether the same forces will be
more or less prevalent, as well as more or less relevant, to the process of human
development in future. How then are we to account for the phenomenal achievements of the
past 50 to 100 years? Many factors have been identified that have contributed to these
accomplishments, but underlying them all is one central thread and compelling force. They
all reflect a fundamental change in attitude. Humanity is no longer satisfied with a low
level or slow pace of development. Society the world over has decided that it wants to
live more comfortably, more intelligently and more progressively now. The force of that
decision, which we have described elsewhere as the power of conscious human choice for
unfailing success, began as a subconscious movement of the collective late in the last
century and has now matured into an unrelenting insistent seeking by the society-at-large.
This fundamental change has its expressions in all fields of social life and gives rise to
a cluster of interrelated factors that in combination are essential conditions and
powerful catalysts of the development process.

Peace

Any evaluation of development potentials needs to take into account the
influence of internal and external social stability on social progress. War is a destroyer
of development. It physically demolishes what society has accomplished. Although countless
wars have been fought within countries and within regions in the past half century leading
to enormous loss of life and waste of resources, the world as a whole has avoided the
catastrophic consequences of large scale, international conflicts that devastate the
productive capabilities of people across entire continents and paralyze international
commercial and economic activity.

The Cold War involved a horrendous expenditure of precious human and
financial resources to produce weapons of mass destruction, but it did somehow manage to
avoid the even more unimaginable destructive impacts of nuclear warfare. The end of the
Cold War has dramatically reduced the threat of armed international conflicts and the
catastrophic consequences of nuclear war, providing a far more stable and secure climate
for worldwide economic expansion. Since 1988, world military expenditure has fallen by
about a third, i.e. $400 billion. If the current peaceful status is sustained, it could
free up even more capital for development.

The long-feared negative impact of reduced military expenditure on economic
growth has been much less than anticipated. Falling defense spending has been followed by
a surprisingly rapid recovery in defense-dependent economies such as California and a long
period of economic expansion in the USA. Robert van Harten pointed out that the end of the
Cold War has already resulted in substantial economic benefits. I find it amazing
that almost no one draws attention to the fact that Americas unexpectedly prolonged
economic expansion has occurred precisely during the period of declining military
expenditure. The energies of the country have been turned away from military and political
confrontation into creative channels for commercial development, just as the
demilitarization of Germany and Japan supported their economic miracles after the Second
World War. If properly nurtured and supported, the next few decades could bring an
unprecedented period of peace and an unparalleled climate for global economic development.
A truly global organization capable of safeguarding the security of all nations, a world
army committed to enforcing non-aggression and global peace, would vastly reduce the
military expenditure of individual nations and serve as an essential foundation for the
full development of the worlds economic potential.

Freedom

The extension of democratic freedoms raises human aspirations. It encourages
individuals to take active initiative for their own advancement. It facilitates freer and
wider social interactions. It releases greater social energy. It vastly increases the
dissemination of information and the multiplication of new organizations. N. Jayashree
traced the historical relationship between freedom and economic development in Europe.
The decline of feudalism, the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, commercial
and democratic revolutions that transformed Western Europe between the 15th and 17th
Centuries are rightly viewed as various expressions of a single social movement that
liberated the individual citizen intellectually, religiously, politically and economically
from blind submission to the social collective. These movements resulted in a tremendous
outburst of human energy and creativity that have culminated in the great technological
and economic accomplishments of the past two hundred years. The common seed of all these
movements is the rising value of the individual human being.

As the transition from monarchy to democracy was a catalyst for rapid
economic advancement of Western countries over the past three centuries, the spread of
democratic institutions in recent decades opens up greater possibilities for global
expansion. Following World War II a democratic revolution swept the world breaking down
colonial empires and liberating more than one billion people from foreign domination. It
gained further momentum after 1980, spreading through Latin America, Eastern Europe and,
most recently, Africa, freeing another half billion people from repressive, authoritarian
regimes. As peace provides a secure external environment for international development,
democracy provides a stable and conducive environment within countries for more rapid
social progress.

The American experience has amply demonstrated that the establishment of
nominally democratic political and legal institutions is not necessarily synonymous with
widespread human freedom for all citizens. It has taken more than two hundred years to
extend full and effective rights to some sections of the US population and that task is
still underway. In many countries democratic institutions remain in an early stage of
development. As they mature, the growth of political freedom will make possible the
emergence of political individuals who exercise freedom of choice with regard to issues of
governance. That freedom encourages the free movement of ideas, social experimentation,
and pioneering individual initiatives that are driving forces for development. The
progressive extension of full and effective rights to people around the globe is an
irresistible movement that promises to accelerate in coming years and usher in a much more
truly democratic revolution than that which has released and stirred so much change in the
recent past.

Education

In his opening remarks, World Academy President Harlan Cleveland placed
greatest emphasis on education and information as the catalysts for all the factors that
have spurred development during the last five decades and are fueling the globalization
process. The globalization trend is more than any other factor a product of the
spread of knowledge. He cited the example of South Korea, which initiated an
intensive program of primary and secondary education in the early 1950s. They did
this without resources in the usual sense of that word. A whole generation got educated
and the result has been spectacular. In less than 50 years South Korea joined the
exclusive club of wealthy OECD nations. Such remarkable accomplishments are driven
by human aspirations, rather than external factors; by the inner choice of society, rather
than external circumstances.

Worldwide, a change in social attitudes has compelled the birth of democracy.
Democracy thrives on education. Education elevates the importance of information.
Globalization is the result of a collective urge to expand the identity of the collective
beyond national borders.

Levels of education have risen dramatically during this century and continue
to rise in countries at all levels of economic development. The impact of primary,
secondary, technical and higher education on development has been documented by a number
of studies. N. Asokan summed up the impact of education this way: The spread of
education is making people more aware of opportunities. It is increasing their productive
skills and thereby increasing their earning capacity. It is stimulating scientific
research and technological innovation, while weakening religious superstitions. Wherever
education spreads we see that there is a corresponding decline in fertility, which is
improving the prosperity of the national economies.And
wherever education spreads we also see that democratic aspirations get stronger and,
correspondingly, there is a weakening of autocratic regimes. When education spreads in
rural and agricultural countries, there is a consequent rise in productivity that helps
transform agrarian economies into industrial ones and, at the next level, helps turn
industrial economies into the post-industrial and information economies. The trend toward
rising productive skills and earning capacity and declining fertility and superstition
will only intensify as education spreads further. What Harlan described in South Korea has
been a force, a powerful force, behind many of the changes that have occurred
worldwide.

The very notion that everyone should be educated would have seemed
preposterous, if not outrageous, to 18th Century Europeans, who regarded
learning as the exclusive privilege of the upper classes and clergy, or to the Brahmins of
India, who believed that knowledge should be the exclusive endowment of the priestly
caste. And even if they had embraced and endorsed such a fantastic notion, the common
people would have spurned it as a superfluous adornment. We have now progressed to the
point where virtually every society on earth has accepted in principle the need to educate
all its citizens and the vast majority of people in every country have come to value
education as a precious and essential endowment. But for all the commendable progress in
extending the scope and benefits of education, the task of equipping all the worlds
people with the knowledge and technical skills needed to prosper in increasingly
technologically advanced societies is still at a very early stage, both in terms of the
number of years of education and, even more so, in terms of the quality of education that
people receive. The 21st Century could well become the century in which
everyone has access to quality lifelong education.

Technological
Application

When people are asked to identify the driving force for social development in
the 21st Century, technology most often comes first to mind. But it should be
evident from the previous discussion that the enormous productive contribution of
technology is built upon an essential political and social foundation. Peace, freedom,
education and social interchange are needed to release the creative powers of human
inventiveness and to harness the products of that inventiveness for productive purposes.

We are now at the close of a century that has witnessed mind-boggling
technological transformationsfrom the horse and buggy and the steamboat to the
automobile, airplane and space shuttle; from Pony Express and the telegraph to Federal
Express and the Internet; from abacus to personal computer; from horse-drawn ploughs and
threshers to hybrid seeds and hydroponics; from oil lamp to laser; from amputations to
organ and limb transplants; from locomotive engineers driving trains to bioengineers
guiding biological evolution.

Carl-Göran Hedén pointed out that in recent years the rate of technological
innovation has far outpaced the rate of technology dissemination and utilization.
Technology is rushing ahead at a pace with which humanity is unable to keep
up. The time required both to develop and disseminate new technologies is becoming
shorter, but technological development far outpaces technological applications and
accomplishments in even the most advanced societies. Even if there were no significant new
technological discoveries over the next five decades, there is probably enough potential
for applying proven technologies to elevate every citizen on the planet to middle class
western standards of living. Adoption and full utilization of already proven technologies
can dramatically elevate performance in every country and in every field.

Robert van Harten cited a single dramatic example of this potential.
The average yield of tomatoes in India is 8 tons per acre, yet more advanced farmers
achieve yields as high as 20 tons. The average yield of tomato in California is 35 tons in
California, but one of Californias leading tomato farmers with 1200 acres under
cultivation routinely obtains average yields of 55 tons or more by applying advanced
systems for micro-nutrient management applicable to all crops and climates. Applying more
sophisticated and capital intensive technology, Israeli farmers achieve yields of 250 tons
of tomato per acre. This wide variation in the application of technology within and
between countries is nothing new. But it is a significant determinant of development and a
factor that is responsive to social policies.

Furthermore, the rate of technological innovation is still increasing. In
fact, we now understand that invention is not a finite process of discovering a limited
number of possibly useful things. It is a process that multiplies in potential as it
grows. The more we invent and discover, the greater the possibilities for further
innovation. This suggests that the contribution of technology to development could be even
greater in future, provided we learn how to more rapidly and fully convert scientific
discoveries into social innovations that benefit broad sections of humanity.

Technology has released its productive power because society has fully
awakened to the powers of technology and chosen to endorse the development and utilization
of this power for its collective progress. This awakening and choice have resulted in a
breathtaking speed of progress. A time will come when society becomes fully conscious of
the productive power of human choice and action. Then human development will blaze ahead
at unimagined speed.

Social Velocity

Development is a function of the velocity of social transactions. The speed of
movement of information, ideas, decisions, technology, people, goods and money has
significant impact on the productivity of the society and its further advancement. For
Canadian businessman John Banks, greater speed means greater commercial opportunities.
The shrinking of the world through better transportation, communication,
information and technology flows opens up commercial opportunities inconceivable just a
few years ago. During the past two decades the volume of international travelers,
freight, telephone and other forms of electronic communication have increased enormously.
Between 1980 and 1994, overseas telephone traffic to and from the USA increased from 200
million to 3.4 billion calls. New technologies such as satellite-based wireless phones are
reducing the cost of expanding the communications infrastructure. Electronic mail has
drastically reduced the cost and increased the speed of written communications. The
meteoric growth of the Internet provides instantaneous low cost access to global
information sources and commercial markets. The speed of technology diffusion is also
accelerating. The Xerox machine was not introduced into India until the late 1970s, more
than 15 years after its use became widespread in the USA. Four years ago, Windows 95 was
launched in New Delhi just weeks after its release in the USA. Two years ago Intel
announced its latest microprocessor simultaneously in USA, India and Beijing. Our
perspective on the next century needs to take into account the impact of the increasing
velocity of social transactions on the speed and course of future development.

Organization

The 20th Century has been one of unprecedented advances in the
technology of organization, the human know-how to design and operate larger, more
efficient and effective economic and social systems and institutions. Hand in hand with
the multiplication of technological innovations designed to expand the range and increase
the productivity of human activities has come an amazing proliferation of innovative
social organizations that are essential for effective utilization of these technologies.
But while most people are quite aware of the advances in technology and their potential
contribution to human development, there is far less appreciation of the essential and
invaluable role of new and improved types of social organizations in the development
process and their vast unutilized potential to accelerate global social and economic
progress. Organization is the social mechanism for supporting and promoting new activities
in society. Never before in history has humanity created and disseminated such a dazzling
array of new organizational innovations in virtually every field of human activity.

Asokan identified the proliferation of organizations as a powerful driving
force for globalization. The phenomenal progress that we see all over the world is
the result and creation of new organizations at the local, national and international
organizations. At the physical level these organizations include the development of
essential infrastructure such as roads, telecommunications, railroads, power grids. At the
social level it includes the development of a wide range of systems and institutions such
as banking and leasing, stock exchanges, commodity markets, credit reporting, and
collection agencies. At the mental level, it includes the development of organizations for
information, education and scientific research, such as research labs, libraries, think
tanks, the Internet and the World Wide Web. In addition to the formal institutions
directly related to economic activity, there are also a large number of non-institutional
organizations that formulate international technical and commercial standards governing
such activities as inter-bank transactions, international air transport,
telecommunications, and product quality. Without these standards international trade would
grind to a halt. Each advance in organization has led to advances in the speed, quality,
efficiency and productivity of economic activities resulting in material improvements in
living standards.

The recent financial crisis in East Asia powerfully demonstrates the
importance of improving our understanding and mastery of the technology of economic
organization. As Ivan Head pointed out, The pace of globalization is so rapid that
even the most sophisticated economic institutions seem unable to keep up with the demands
for organizational innovation. The issue of global economic organization demands much more
attention on the part of policy advisors than is now the case.

Jingjiai Hanchanlash stressed the growing importance of international
economic institutions at the global and regional level and the parallel organization of
private financial institutions that operate along side the public sector apparatus, but
not always in close coordination with it. Internationally, we have the organizations
created fifty years ago, the World Bank and some regional organizations, that have met
certain needs and continue to meet to serve an important purpose. But in addition we need
many new types of organizations to make the opportunities of globalization accessible at
the local level in countries around the world. Iridium, the first truly global
telecommunications corporation established by a combination of public and private
stockholders in sixteen industrialized and developing nations, is one example of a new
type that is emerging.

When we look at the future of economic development, we need to understand
which organizations are essential to drive social growth, how these organizations emerge
in society and become effective, and what we can do to promote the creation of new
organizations fast enough to deliver ideas, products and information to meet social needs.Organization grows and thrives on
informationnot just the quality but the quantity of it. As information is
dramatically expanding in the world, we need to better understand the impact of that on
the quality and complexity of our organizations. The growing complexity of globalization
does not fit the old paradigm of centralized or decentralized organizations. The pattern
that is emerging is much more what Cleveland terms uncentralized, consisting of many
different functions being initiated from independent but interrelated centers, rather than
everything being controlled from one point. We need to understand much better which
functions can best be performed by centralized, decentralized or uncentralized structures.

To overcome the dichotomies that so often enter into debates about the role
of organization in development, Mircea Malitza proposed a new intellectual paradigm. He
depicted the evolving organization of global society as an orange with multiple,
interrelated layers of nets around it. The inference is that we cannot arbitrarily divide
the world into private sector and public sector, or into scientific, economic, social and
religious parts. Society is a single complex web of organization. Walt Stinson emphasized
the need for an appropriate balance and blend of public and private organizations.
Public organizations cannot do many things that private organizations do, but
perhaps even this type of contrast or polarization is really part of the problem. The
reality we seek to describe is the organization of human society. There is a regulatory
function that government can best carry out. There is a need for individual creativity and
initiative, which is the natural role of the private sector. Society needs to discover the
right functional relationship and proper balance between each strand of this very complex
fabric of organization, which is increasing in complexity so rapidly that we do not even
have a computer model that can track its evolution. This is the knowledge we need about
organization. As Ivan Head put it, We are engaged in a knowledge process. We
need to discover what best we can do to design more successful knowledge
organizations.

In the quest for global knowledge, we also need to understand much better the
organic relationship between our organizations and the society. Building organizations is
not a question of finding a right magical formula for some external super-structure.
Organizations have arisen in the world at the local level, at the national level and
internationally as an outgrowth, a flowering of seeds in each society. We need to better
understand that process and the link between the structures we have created and the
societies that give them birth, especially when we want to transfer those structures to
other societies where they have not arisen by themselves.

Concerns about Globalization

The approach of a new millennium raises fresh hopes and new fears, wildly
optimistic dreams of unimagined accomplishment and paranoid visions of conspiracy
threatening to destroy all that has already been achieved. In spite of phenomenal
material, political and social achievements over the past 100 years, the process of
globalization that is gaining momentum around the world raises powerful anxiety,
uncertainty and resentment among those who feel they are being left out or short-changed
by forces beyond their control. There is, as Jack Fobes described, a growing sense
of resentment against inequalities, disparities, gaps, against the globalization of power
in money, markets and media.

Resentment of
Inequities

Many people despair that they are worse off than before and actually losing
ground in the race for progress. How can we reconcile statistics that indicate
unprecedented accomplishments for most human beings with the widespread perception that
many people are less satisfied than before? The answer may lie in what Cleveland termed
the revolution of rising expectations while he was working in Asia back in the early
fifties. He observed that newfound political and social freedoms, access to education and
information, and the opening up of opportunities for individual advancement had released
an enormous outburst of social energy and activity. Now this same force has spread through
Eastern Europe and most countries of the developing world, even to outlying villages in
Asia and Africa. The spread of information, education and social opportunity is unleashing
a powerful force for social transformation. People everywhere dare to aspire for more than
their ancestors ever thought possible. They have learned not only to aspire for more, but
in the growing atmosphere of freedom to also demand more, sometimes vehemently and even
violently. If there is any hope of a better future for the world, it is because this
aspiration has been ignited.

Rising aspirations have had two demonstrable consequences. First, they have
contributed to a tremendous release of social energy, an outpouring of social innovation
and individual initiative unparalleled in history. Even in many of what were until
recently traditional, conservative societies, change has come to be accepted as the only
constant. People everywhere are breaking out of the patterns of the past, venturing into
new activities, experimenting with new ideas, new technologies and new ways of life.
Second, almost everywhere the growth of aspirations and expectations has outpaced actual
human achievements, leading to the paradoxical situation of increasing standards of living
and growing dissatisfaction with what has been achieved. If we look back in
historythere was a time not too long ago when the whole country lived for the sake
of one man whom people called a monarch. What we find today is an increasing intolerance for inequity. At the same time we find
everybody aspiring to have what previously was possible only for very few.

This explains the apparent paradox of increasing prosperity accompanied by
increasing discontent. As development advances, people tend more and more to judge their
present status not in terms of what they enjoyed in the past but in terms of what other
people have achieved, of which they are increasingly aware due to the information
revolution. Rising aspirations, when not immediately satisfied, can fuel increasing
resentment.

Threats to Cultural
Diversity

One of the most serious concerns regarding globalization is the fear that it
will eradicate the worlds rich cultural diversity. Cleveland rejected the view that
globalization is synonymous with uniformalization, that it will result in a single,
homogeneous global culture. Globalization certainly does spread uniform
technologies, but I am increasingly impressed with the fact that the most important
product of all this globalization is diversity. The process is making people aware of
differences and making them deal with differences in ways that they did not have to do
before, because they never mixed with those other people, or because they dominated them,
or were dominated by them. I am coming to believe that on balance the net affect of
globalization is probably to increase variety rather than to propagate more
uniformity.

Rejecting fears of cultural uniformity, Ivo Slaus believes that the impact of
globalization is to increase the possibilities. Globalization increases the number
of optionsthe total number of options and also the number of options for each
individual. This offers a chance for every individual and every social group to
essentially catch up at any time. That chance is not a guarantee. It is a global
opportunity. The whole aim is to increase these opportunities. Therefore, I would suggest
that development involves an increase in the number of options and this is what
globalization is bringing. The force behind this movement is the human being with her or
his free choices.The challenge is to make
choices that increase the freedom for others to choose, rather than to limit their
possibilities. We need diversity in cultures as much as we need biological diversity in
order to survive and keep increasing our options.

Certainties and Uncertainties

Discussion of the globalization process uncovered a host of certainties and
uncertainties. Among the certainties, it is evident that the next century will see even
greater recognition of and insistence upon the value and central importance of the human
being in the society. Human aspirations for freedom and opportunities for free choice will
grow ever more powerful and insistent and the options available for the exercise of that
choice will become ever more varied. Average levels of educational levels will far exceed
what is common today. Technologies will continue to multiply. Access to information will
become truly universal. Everything will move many times faster than it does today.
Organizations will provide greater opportunities for creative expression of individuality
and thereby themselves become more creative. Also certain, that global society possesses
the means, if it possesses the determination, to guarantee every citizen opportunities for
gainful employment and reasonable levels of prosperity.

Among the uncertainties, it is not at all clear whether society will succeed
in closing the gulf between expectations and outcomes. Nor do we know whether social
tensions resulting from this gap will rise further or decline. Presently it is uncertain
what type of global organizations we need to fully support universal peace and prosperity
nor whether the nations of the world will cede sufficient sovereignty quickly enough to
avert greater divisiveness in international affairs.

In spite of recent achievements, some were pessimistic that the prospects for
developing countries would substantially improve in coming decades. Others shared the
confidence expressed by Bob Berg when he described the world emerging in the coming
century as one of enormous opportunities for social progress. We have already
started a whole bunch of processes that will accumulate to make the decades ahead over the
next century a kind of golden age of social development.

Need for a new paradigm

The discussion on the likely future impact of globalization seemed to
polarize participants into groups representing widely divergent views of the process. Some
believed that the benefits far outweighed the costs and considered most of the problems
associated with the process as temporary obstacles that would inevitably be overcome for
the overall benefit of humanity. Others viewed the process as an inexorable movement of
domination by the rich and powerful over the poor and vulnerable people and countries of
the world.

Francisco Sagasti suggested that this dichotomy of positions is the result of a too
linear view of development and argued that we need a different kind of thinking and new
theoretical concepts to understand the implications of globalization. What we have
is a contradictory processsome trends point in one direction, trends that are going
in a different direction at the same time. About
20 percent of the worlds population still live at a subsistence level. They remain
within the local circles of accumulation and have nothing to do with the globalization
process. What we are seeing could be called a fractured global orderan order that is
pulling all of us together and, at the same time, maintains deep divisions and some of
those divisions and separations are broadeningan order that makes us aware of
everybody else but at the same time makes us very much aware that not even in a hundred
years we may reach somewhat the levels of consumption or well-being that are available for
other people. We have to start changing the way we think about it. Instead of thinking in
linear terms, we must learn to think in paradoxical terms, to be able to confront these
new situationschaotic, paradoxical, and uncertainwithout being overwhelmed by
them. We must have the intellectual capacity to apprehend contradictory facts and the
ability to transform those perceptions into more or less sensible actions, which is not
very easy to do. Over the next several years in this paradoxical messy complicated
uncertain situation that has no immediate scope for neat dialectical or logical
resolution, we are going to have to open up the very concept and idea of development in a
much more radical way and evolve new conceptions of culture and development.

What then should be the role of our leaders in an age of unparalleled opportunity
and uncertainty? Slaus described it this way: Let us live with the uncertainties and
let us realize that in the concept of leadership, rather than a leader being somebody who
should take us on a very well predictable course, the primary role of the leader is
basically to increase the number of options for individual human beings. The goal should
be to increase the freedom that each one of us has and the best process of doing that is,
of course, education. A more profound change in our conception of leadership may
even be warranted. Perhaps in future it will not be personal leaders at all, but rather
thoughts and ideas that play the determining role in directing the energies of society.

Walt Stinson went even further in stating that increasing human choice is the one
essential goal of the development process. Development means different things to
people, so we will never be able to arrive at an objective set of measures to
satisfactorily measure it. Therefore, I suggest a subjective measure. Development is a
measure of the capacity of people to make choices. If individuals are free to think what
they want, live where they want, choose the occupations they prefer, obtain the type and
quality of education they aspire for, and meet their consumption needs as they define
them, then they are more developed than those who do not have this freedom. If the
individual has all the choices, a cornucopia of choices, unlimited choices, that is
development. When individual choices are limited, when individuals have few choices and
are locked into situations they would choose not to be locked into, that is
underdevelopment.

Inexhaustible Resources

The science of economics was founded during a period when human development
depended to a very large extent on land and other limited material resources. In an age of
scarcity and famine it was not surprising that early thinkers conceived of production and
consumption in terms of severe limits. The foregoing discussion suggests that in very
great measure the accomplishments of the 20th Century are the result of forces
that are neither material nor limited. Peace, freedom, information, human aspiration,
social energy, individual initiative, technological innovation and organization are human
resources, products of human development, which are not subject to any inherent or
ultimate limits. These resources, in turn, vastly increase the productivity of even
limited material resources and multiply incalculably the potential for development.

As Cleveland observed, Ive been struck by the use of the term
limits to growth by several people, which I thought had justifiably gone out
of fashion because it really applies only to limits of physical development. In the
information arena, in which most economic phenomena now are controlled by what you might
call the information environment, the only limits, the really alarming limits, are the
limits to imagination and creativity which come back to the individual.So it seems to me that one of the great
certainties about the next century is the absence of knowable limits to what the human
brain and the human spirit can make possible. We make a mistake if we get so caught up in
current issues of physical limitation that we miss this insurmountable
opportunity.

A change of attitude is compelling humanitys progress, a growing urge
that no longer accepts any ultimate limits to what can be accomplished. A mental urge in
humanity for greater knowledge has stimulated the development of education, technology and
information. A vital urge for peace, security and prosperity insistently strives to create
the conditions needed for their fulfillment. With each advance, humanity becomes less
dependent on external compulsions and more aware of its inner capacity to choose its own
destiny. So we are discovering that human beings are the real source, the ultimate
resource, for social progress. And if we succeed
in pushing back the limits far enough, it is quite possible that the greatest discovery of
the next century, which will be remembered far into the future, will be the practical
discovery of the infinite potential of the human being.